Zorash told us about an old widow lady that lives near Mr. Iddrisu that needed assistance; last month after a big rain storm one of the outer walls of her house fell down. The roof is still intact. The house only has 2 rooms so she packed everything that she did not want to get wet into the other room. Everyone is living in one room. She is taking care of her son’s two orphan children and one or two of her daughter’s children. Her son had a good job in Accra. When his children were small he stole them away from their mother and brought them to Yendi to live with his mother. We do not know why he took the children from their mother. When they came to Yendi they did not even speak or understand the language. She has had the children for more than 5 years. Her son used to send money to help care for the children before he was killed. He was a road grader operator and he was teaching an apprentice how to run the road grader when something went wrong and the apprentice ran over her son. The widow lady does not know the name of the children’s mother nor their family; we are not even sure if she knows where the woman lives. She asked for assistance in repairing the wall of the house. Thanks to our generous supporters we will be able to give her the sand, gravel and cement that she needs to do the repairs. The wall is made of mud balls but mud wall cannot be put up during the rainy season. We went to visit the widow today and let her know that we were prepared to help as soon as the rain stopped. Hopefully one day next week we will contract a motor king driver to haul the gravel to her house. She was so grateful that we were going to help her. We will also get her signed up with Social Welfare and there is also a “Leap” program in our area that helps with food and things for orphans.
Meri and Zorash came to work today to make up days. We washed tons of clothes today. I decided that I needed to wash all the fabric in my stash while it is still raining and we have water in abundance. Some of the fabric is batik and it has to be washed and rinsed 4 times before all the dye is out. It is hand dyed and if I use it without washing it the quilt will be ruined if it ever has to be washed. Who does not wash their quilts from time to time?
We also went to town to pick up a new sieve I had made. I bought a used air filter from a semi-truck; I thought the metal mesh that covers the filter would be small enough that the soybeans would not pass through it. I was disappointed when I tried it out. We are going to move to “Plan B” on this project. I am going to have one made that has two screens slightly offset from one another.
We have not seen anything of the goat yet! Ha!
Take care,
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
